


Rascals and Rodents

by Ordinarily



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Groundhog Day, Sad Sam Winchester, Sam just needs his big bro okay, Season 3 ep 11, kinda angsty, the six months killed me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 21:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14756436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ordinarily/pseuds/Ordinarily
Summary: Sam's on the hunt for the trickster after months of his shenanigans... and months of missing Dean.(Spoilers for Season 3, Episode 11 - Mystery Spot)





	Rascals and Rodents

**Author's Note:**

> So I started watching Supernatural and I'm obsessed... 
> 
> If you don't remember this episode because it was ages ago, it's when Sam keeps reliving the same Tuesday over and over again and Dean keeps dying. When Sam finally wakes up on Wednesday, Dean dies, and Sam spends six months on the hunt for the trickster.

It’d been thirteen weeks since Dean died and nothing irked Sam more than the knowledge that he _wasn’t_ dead. Not really. Because with the snap of his fingers, his old pal trickster could bring him back. Reverse all this time, render his suffering obsolete. But he’d spent months trying to find him at this point. Months booking motels with two beds only to roll over in the middle of the night and find the second one vacant. Months taking cases that he thought would lead him to his shady friend only to turn up empty handed yet again. Months being careful with _his_ life because if his life was put at stake then so was Dean’s, and Sam wasn’t going to have that. 

He tried not dwell on the schematics so much. But when a fourth month passed, he couldn’t help it. All this time he’d spent cleaning bullet wounds from his body and seeing through red-edged tunnel vision, Dean would’ve barely had any time left before his trip downstairs. They would’ve been squeezing through, chasing hope down narrow halls until his brother reached a dead end that Sam’s giant build couldn’t get to. But Dean wasn’t due until then; he still had a little while to live, long seasons left to patter his way through. And Sam was going to make sure they got back to that Tuesday—Wednesday—if it was the last thing he did. 

Gripping Baby’s steering wheel felt wrong. Like a responsibility that’d come too soon or an invasive violation of trust. He pulled into the first drive-in diner he saw because the road was blurring again and he’d been thinking too much. Trying to be like your brother was a tad easier when he wasn’t around; it felt like someone’s place you could take—at least for a little while—and that, more than anything, scared the ever-loving shit out of Sam.

He stumbled into the dinky restaurant, jaw set and eyes cold. As he flopped into a torn a booth, he pictured Dean across from him, pigging out on a plate of whatever their specialty was today and it reminded him so much of that day he’d lived over and over and _over_ , that he nearly broke down right there at the table.

“What can I getcha, hon?” He snapped out of his thoughts, lost and drowsy, and tried his best to smile at the waitress.

“Coffee, black.”

He watched as she flipped her pad over, not bothering to write anything, and strode off. The diner was mostly empty, sad and rotting—although he imagined it could get pretty busy on weekends—aside from a girl with her hand shielding her eyes. He squinted at her, trying to decide if he should be skeptical or empathetic. It looked like she was writing something, and he strained to get a better look to where she sat at the barstools. 

The waitress impeded his view momentarily as she poured him a cup and he looked up briefly to nod in thanks, before going back to studying the young girl. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, he reasoned as she finally shifted, straightening and baring her face to him. She looked tired, disheveled and sullen, but he figured he probably looked worse. She ran a hand through her hair, ripped out a sheet of paper, and crumpled it, and he had the sudden urge to get up. Instead, he drank his coffee and went back to thinking about his current plight.

Bela had been no help at all, Ruby had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth, and Bobby was trying his best, that much Sam knew. But none of it was good enough and Sam was beginning to fear the worse. He’d spend his entire life hunting that damn trickster if he had to, but he imagined things would get pretty bad if he didn’t find him soon. The world didn’t stop turning because one Dean Winchester was dead and it wouldn’t stop even if everyone on the planet was wiped out. Every now and then, intrusive thoughts plagued him and Sam feared all of this was some sort of illusion, a simulation designed by the jester, jingling bells and all. On the off chance that this was all real, there were cases piling up and the afterlife still wasn’t very happy with him, even after acquiring his brother’s soul. He was down a member of the team and his chances of victory were probably cut by about half—more than half, if he was being realistic, here. 

He needed _Dean_ to fend off the demons so he could work on getting _Dean_ back. 

Some  _sick_ catch-22.

Eventually he decided he’d had enough wallowing in misery and stood up, dropping a couple of bills on the table. It was only as he started for the back exit that he crashed into someone. An apology formed inside his mouth but his throat refused to cooperate so he stared down at her, silent. Up close, he could see just how distraught she was, dark bags under her eyes and a sort of franticness within them. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled and maneuvered around him.

He wasn’t sure why but he called out to her. “Hey! You okay?”

She stopped in her tracks, spinning to look at him. She seemed incredulous at first, like she wasn’t sure why he’d ask a perfect stranger such a question—and to be quite honest, he wasn’t all that sure either. But then she nodded, so he nodded back. It wasn’t his place and he had his own pressing matters to deal with so he pushed the back door open and made his way to the car. There was a scream as he pulled open the driver-side door, however, and it slammed shut just as quickly. He sprinted to the front of the dinner joint, wishing he could ignore it. None of this would matter when the timeline was set right again, but for now it did, and Sam still didn’t have the heart to turn a blind eye. 

She was there, struggling against some guy with his arms around her. Sam didn’t even think about it, he pulled out the handgun from his waistband, aiming. “Leave her alone.” 

He was expecting a more arduous fight, a more tenacious endeavor, but apparently it was just some sleazy creep with a set of problems all his own. He took off sprinting for the main road as Sam approached the girl, asking if she was okay for the second time that night. She nodded quickly, seeming a little choked up. And then she was crying and sitting on the ground of the parking lot, head in her hands. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

“Whoa, hey.” He hadn’t heard himself be that compassionate in months. “It’s gonna be alright.”

She shook her head, heaving gasps. “I don’t—I don’t think it is.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked, hesitantly sitting next to her. The concrete was cold and he had half a mind to stand up again.

She looked him over appeasingly, like she wasn’t quite sure if she should share and, honestly, he didn’t blame her all that much. Hell, if he crossed paths with someone who looked like he did right now, he probably wouldn’t trust them either. But apparently she was braver than him—or more naive, definitely one of the two—because she rubbed her nose and sighed. “I… had to leave home.” 

“You had to?”

She stared at the pavement, picking at tiny rocks. “Yeah. And… I guess I didn’t think living on my own would be this hard, you know? I picked up a job at the gas station and that was fine but… It’s not the same. It’s scary and lonely and…”

“I know the feeling.”

“You do?”

He met her eyes. “Yeah. ‘Course, I do. My brother and I were alone for most of our lives.”

“Parents out of the picture?”

“Something like that.” Sam wasn't really sure why he continued, but he did. “And… and now I’m looking for him. My brother.”

“He leave too?”

“Mm… more like abducted, I think.”

“That’s terrible,” she whispered, the pebbles peaking her interest again.

 He looked up at the sky, searching for stars. He found clouds instead, fluffy and grey against a bleaker backdrop. “And you? Home’s that rough?”

“My parents… they’re not… they’re not who they used to be. Haven’t been for months. I’m not sure they’re them at all, actually.”

 His heart sank. He had a feeling he knew exactly who they were. “That’s… that’s… I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, they were never… Both of them, at the same time, just… snapped.” She shook her head, a shiver passing through her body. Sam nodded, wondering just what they’d done to her. He didn’t ask. “You know everyone’s got a breaking point but you never think…” She looked out at the towering pine trees in the distance, golden light from indoors casting warm shadows over her face. “You never think it’ll be the people you love.”

“So… what are you gonna do?”

“All I can do. Keep going.”

He could practically hear Dean’s voice offering him the same piece of advice or shrugging off the same kind of question.

“What about you?” she asked, softly.

“Yeah… yeah, me too.” 

“I hope you find your brother.”

And for the first time in awhile, Sam found himself smiling. Small and tightlipped, but genuine. He nearly offered help, nearly told her he had a hunch about her parents’ hasty personality shift, before he remembered the insignificance of all this. He’d find the trickster and force him to go back, and the half year he’d spent in utter turmoil (that may very well have been nothing but some kind of black magic acid trip) would never even exist. An alternate timeline with a premature destruction. But he made a mental note of her, filed her tribulation at the very front of his psychological storage cabinet and decided he’d revisit when all this was over. He hoped he could give her a chance at a life that wouldn’t mirror his own—or Dean’s, for that matter—that she wouldn’t have to become this stone-cold person who wasn’t allowed to feel because she was too busy taking care of fundamentals. 

“Do you want a lift?”

She looked kind of hesitant and, once again, he didn’t blame her. “Only if you promise you won’t point that gun at me.”

“Deal. But you probably shouldn’t trust the word of a stranger like that.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll take my chances with the guy who saved me from a kidnapping.” 

Sam stood, a grin fighting its way onto his face. “Who’s to say it’s not all a facade? What if _I’m_ the real creep?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, watching her for a response. 

“You _do_ look like you’re at your wits’ end… and I don’t know how much faith I have in that car of yours.” She gestured at the Impala and he mock-gasped on behalf of Dean, holding an offended hand to his chest.  

She laughed, bright and sweet, and got up off the ground. She was much shorter—although pretty much everyone was shorter than Sam—and as she peered up at him, a protective instinct nagged at his superego. And it was that kind of intuition that had him realizing with striking clarity just how much he’d turned into his brother. But this kid he’d met in a diner off the side of a dirt road not half an hour ago, distressed and jittery, restored a warmth he hadn’t felt in himself since… since a _long_ time ago. 

“Come on,” he said breezily, sauntering over to the car with her in tow, “i’ll teach you how to disarm a gun.”

 

***


End file.
